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Friday, 19 June 2015

A House for a Flower Fairy - Hillarys Craft Competition 2015

As you know I love a challenge and this one was no different. This is my entry for the Hillarys Craft Competition 2015 - you can see the details of the competition here.

I chose the lovely Rayna Apple fabric and then had a good think. I had an initial idea, based on the pattern of the fabric) but then thought of other things. Time passed. I was going to make a bag but then I went back to my first thought which was to make a useful storage box which also doubles as a play cottage for a child (or adult). The Flower Cottage was about to be built, or sewn in this case.

Here is what I used

You can see my sketch in the top right. That is plastic canvas you can see. If you do not have any you could use some other hard thing such as other plastic or even cardboard (but you will not be able to wash it). I also used my trusty sewing machine and embroidery thread for the hand sewing.

I have to be honest - I knew what I wanted and thought I knew how to do it but I did have a few false starts along the way. But ,hey, great learning experience.

The box is made up of 5 pieces, 2 for the end doors, 2 for the walls, one for the floor. And the roof is made of of 2 pieces joined together. You will need two pieces of fabric for each piece. I sewed the pieces together first, the plastic canvas went in each 'pocket' , then I sewed all these together into the floor piece. The roof I did cut up four pieces of fabric but it would have been easier to do two pieces to make one large rectangle and then just sew down the middle to create the two pockets for the plastic canvas.

I cut out the petals from the fabric to use as roof tiles and then hand sewed them using blanket stitch.

Loops and buttons hold it in the box shape.

On the walls I did some embroidery, and used some charms. Here is the sewing table and above on the wall, a bookshelf.

The Welcome mat to greet visitors to Flower Cottage.

A chair with nice pink cushion for when the fairy is tired.

When the box is laid out it becomes a play mat, the roof could be the garden.

And of course you could always use it as a handy storage box.

You can use this idea for any type of play set which also doubles as a storage box to keep the pieces (as long as they are not too small) safe. You could also make it into a sewing box with the walls being handy pincushions and scissor compartments.
It was good fun to do. I am rather happy with The Flower Cottage.